The United States Student Association held its 66th annual National Student Congress at the Hotel Heldrich in New Brunswick between July 19 and July 24. Although I was only able to attend the July 22nd issues plenary, the Congress gave me a feeling of renewed hope for progressive forces in the United States.
First I was impressed by the Congress breath of interests and involvements. On Saturday and Sunday, workshops centered on such issues as training for student l-labor organizing; expelling Wall Street from campus and ending student debt; responding to the crisis effecting millions of undocumented immigrant students and learning how to participate in meetings, how to use Roberts Rules of Order While a conservative student caucus also had its meetings, the agenda and virtually all of the comments from the elected delegates, many leaders of student governments through the country, reflected and combined the outlook of peoples movement organizations through the country.
Nat Sowinski, a student who introduced an important resolution for a Comprehensive Joint Report on Surveillance against Students(which was passed unanimously) told me that the USSA understood the need to organize, to gain grassroots power, in order to students rights, which couldn’t be separated from the rights of labor, people of color, women. Another speaker, addressing this issue, mentioned its significance for students of Muslim background in the U.S., who have been special targets of surveillance and harassment in violation of traditional civil liberties and legal principles of probable cause, due process, and equal protection under the law.
While the National Women’s Student Coalition, National People of Color Student Coalition, and National Queer Student Coalition held their own meetings, there was much more unity here then I remembered from my days as a graduate student at the University of Michigan, where divisions between various groups of left political activists, counter culture radicals, and separatist oriented ethnic groups played a significant role in failing to really advance the opportunities for progressive social change in the U.S. that the Civil Rights movement, especially, had through its victories opened up for a brief time .
These students were far less naïve, far more sophisticated in coordinating in an inclusive way the struggles of working class students, students of color, LGBT students, and of course all students who face a bleak world of debt peonage in a system of higher education which forces students to face a lifetime of repaying student loans as best they can in an economy producing fewer and fewer jobs worthy of their education.
In that regard, I had an interesting discussion with Jon Ferreira, a student in the U.S. from Brazil who had introduced a resolution defending the rights of undocumented students. He mentioned that in Brazil, with all of its problems, the system of higher education was both free and at least as good as the U.S. In the U.S., he has already acquired a very substantial debt to pay for his education at a public university.
When I mentioned that large numbers of people put up with this because of the abundance of comparatively cheap consumer goods made by cheap labor abroad, what I call the “Wal-mart State” as against a real Welfare State, he agreed, mentioning that his relatives who come to the U.S. praise the availability of cheap consumer goods here while he tries to convince them of the destructive effects of an education system increasingly out of reach for millions of students.
The Conference will continue today with more workshops and planning sessions and conclude on Wednesday. My brief report only gives a few of the highlights; others included action items to end sexual violence on campus, stop through defunding and other maneuvers the “systematic eradication of student of color organizations” (something that has been a concomitant to right wing Republican governors and legislatures general attack on higher education and all public sector activities and unions ) were advanced.
At the session which I attended, the USSA adopted unanimously a resolution call for a bi-annual National Diversity and Social Justice Conference, which would bring together many of these issues.
Although the music and the dancing I saw was new to me (and I was in no shape to join in anyway) the best of my student generation, the call for a participatory democracy, of focused activism was present at this Congress from students who had already learned a great deal from their history even if many of the politicians and government and university officials and at least some of the faculty who teach them
